


A Cage that Keeps Me

by Giddygeek



Category: Melancholia (2011)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:37:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giddygeek/pseuds/Giddygeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justine had called to it, and Melancholia had answered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cage that Keeps Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aphrodite_mine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/gifts).



> For warnings slightly more specific than the archive provides, please see end notes.

At the end of the world, it's Auntie Steelbreaker who kneels, slow and unsteady, the weight of planets on her back, and pulls her nephew to safety.

He had fallen backwards, head almost outside the branches built up around them. The first thing she'd seen when she opened her eyes was his lifeless face, his lips tinged blue. She wants to tuck the limp weight of him into Claire's arms, but Claire had been panicking before she collapsed. Auntie Steelbreaker touches Claire's hands to loosen them from their frantic grip on nothing and turn them palm-down to the earth, the soft grass and rich soil that still exists here, inside their cave.

The cave Justine and Leo had built because she had promised him for so long; because she had held her nephew, promised him this, and wept; because she had looked at his pale, calm, trusting face and thought _not him_ as the fire engulfed them.

Beyond the borders of what safety she and Leo had created, burned, desolate earth stretches on forever--water, rocks, and trees boiled away, leaving only the scarred face of a strange planet. There isn't air for screaming. Justine wants it anyway, wants to rip open her throat with what she's feeling, but there is only just enough thin oxygen for slow, shallow breaths.

Auntie Steelbreaker turns her head and looks over her shoulder. Her hand tightens on Claire's. Melancholia looms behind her, beautiful and right and Justine's, her fate and dream and nightmare. She had called to it and Melancholia had answered; she had brought it to her across the universe to save her, to hold her steady and destroy her.

 _Go_ , she says, soundless under the roar of the lovely blue planet destroying her world, through the damage to her eardrums, with the thinness of the air in her lungs. _I'm sorry. Go._

She's so, so sorry.

~

She makes herself turn her eyes away from Melancholia, and the house stands. The trees stand. The grass stands in a wave rolling toward her. Behind her, the wave rolls on, _restruction_ , piece by piece remaking what she had wanted so badly to destroy. It hurts, but Justine stands; the grass stands, the trees stand, the house stands, the world stands.

Melancholia curls away from her, sad and disappointed and angry about being sent home. It pushes oxygen back into the atmosphere, vengeful. It snatches its gravity away like a ball from a playground. It sulks because Justine can't come out to play.

But Justine stands. She feels Melancholia leaving and knows this is her punishment. This is what she suffers for her weakness, her final moment of indecision. She is alive. She is alone.

Fucking Auntie Steelbreaker.

~

Outside of their cave, the air is still thin, hot like a desert summer. Justine tucks the branch she had pushed away back into place, to keep the cave stable and safe. She doesn't look at Claire and Leo still on the ground behind her. She doesn't have to; she knows that as she walks away from them, their lungs will fill with oxygen, their hearts beat, their minds wake. She won't look back.

She finds Abraham in the front of the house, standing calm, saddled, ready for her. She gathers the reins together, leather softening in her grip. She looks into his calm, dark eyes, and touches his velvet nose as his burned-away whiskers come back to tickle her palm. She lets him mouth affectionately at her shoulder, then she puts her hand on his withers and her foot in the stirrup.

Abraham's stride is long and flowing at the slow double-beat of the trot. He's calm under her hands. They break into an easy canter, and everything they leave behind them blossoms into rebeing, one two three, onetwothree, _onetwothree_.

~

The bridge.

Abraham wheels around before it and the world beyond it changes, burnt crumpled husks of trees to living trees to Michael in a trapped limo, asleep and waiting for her.

The horse will cross the bridge for her now. She knows it, knows she can take him to the white stretch of the car, dismount and leave him behind as she gets behind the wheel. The limo will back out of the drive, and Michael will sleep behind her until it's time for him to wake up. His lips will be pink, breath steady, and heart hers.

They are halfway across. Abraham's ears are tipped forward, alert and interested in the rebuilding world. He's ready to go.

Justine stops him. They look into the trees. Michael is at the bottom of the drive; under an apple tree, in a field far away; in his own bed at home, with someone who can love him without it being the end of the world.

Halfway across.

A step backward. Another. Her horse trusting her, taking each step calmly like they are before the judges in the ring, Claire and John and Leo in the stands, a number pinned to Justine's back, showing everyone what she and Abraham can do. What no one else can do, because even John can't ride him here. Because John can't ride him ever again. A step back. A step back. Somewhere else, Michael's eyes are opening, he is taking a deep breath, and the world around him isn't destroyed. A step back.

A step back.

~

It is dark and cool by the time they return to the house. There is dew forming on the lush greens of the golf course. The moon is in its rightful place, shining a path over the water, a silver bridge so steady that Justine and Abraham could probably cross there and leave everything behind them.

Melancholia. It's receding so far and so fast that the solar system spins back into place in its wake. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, tiny sad Pluto settling into its irregular orbit with what Justine feels like her own heartbreak. Auntie Steelbreaker feels Leo's head against her hip as she looks through his father's telescope, Leo's little voice reciting the planets' names in order. Earth, Venus, Mercury.

She leaves Abraham in the paddock, unsaddled, the bridle draped over a fence post with the reins tucked neatly up. He can't go to his stall, not with his hooves edged in metal and his weight balanced so delicately and dangerously upon them.

Under the straw, as the world is remade, John sleeps, or doesn't; it becomes his choice again, and Auntie Steelbreaker won't let Justine take that from him. Justine so often chooses wrong. Her sister's husband, her nephew's father. The man who told her that he'd bought Justine happiness with his money, and it was not a blessing when he said so, because he hated her then almost as much as she hated herself. She lets him be.

The horses in their stalls are quiet and drowsy. The moon shines down on the dewy grass. Justine stands in the paddock and Melancholia twinkles out of her reach, _this is your choice, Steelbreaker; may it break you or leave you happy_ , gone.

~

Claire and Leo aren't lying on the grass. The lawn is empty, green, and still. Justine stands on the terrace, and thinks that perhaps this is the time for a glass of wine. A bottle. A bottle of pills, like John out in the straw. Or maybe it's just time to go in the house. Justine knows what she would choose; wrong, and wrong again; Auntie Steelbreaker climbs the stairs slowly, tired. It's been a long life, and Justine wants to sleep through the sun rising.

Claire is in the house, in Justine's room, in Justine's bed. She's wrapped around her son. He's breathing in the slow snorting sleep-breaths that Justine has listened for on so many nights when she couldn't close her eyes. He takes them one at a time, not thinking about the next. Justine stands beside the bed and listens to him breathing, in out steady, over and over.

Between Justine's sheets, her head on Justine's pillow, her sister shifts restlessly.

"Is this Heaven?" Claire asks. Her eyes wide open, turned to the ceiling. Tear tracks on her cheeks that glow in the moonlight.

Justine can't answer that.

Claire has one hand in Leo's hair, his head on her stomach. Claire liked when he rested there. His weight reminded her, she said, of being pregnant. Of carrying him inside her, loving him, keeping him safe. A cave, Justine thinks. Leo, promised the safety of a cave.

Claire's other hand rests palm up and open on the bed. Her lips are trembling. They're soft and pink again, even in the bleached light of the white moon. Claire, always so strong and anxious, takes a shuddering breath, another, worrying whether the next one will come. She holds her hand up for her sister to take.

Justine puts one knee on the bed, then the other, slow stiff movements like her joints are ancient and creaking. She curls up against her sister's side, one arm across her sister's stomach, above Leo's head and below Claire's breasts. She brings the smell of horse with her, and dew, and dirt. She blends that with the faintest hint of Claire's sweat, tears, and warmth, and the sleepy smell of a boy who's alive and growing up second by second.

Claire looks at her, steady in the darkness. Mouth open for each breath, a little rasp in the back of her throat. "Is this Hell?"

Auntie Steelbreaker won't answer that.

Instead she holds her sister, hushes her. Hums an old familiar tune, the one Claire hummed to her as she washed Justine's hair in the old clawfoot tub, as she smoothed moisturizer on Justine's shoulders and hands, as she held Justine's robe for her to slip into. Comfort, and a prayer for sanity, and the warmth of caretaking. Love.

She feels Claire relaxing in her arms. The moon sets beyond the window, the sun beginning to rise. Its regular orbit. The days will pass again in their regular time, one two three. Leo will grow old now in the regular way of children, leaps and bounds, games and stories. He will remember the glory of their cave, its safety, the roar of the world ending while his eyes closed. His mother's hand in his, his Auntie Steelbreaker holding onto them both. Justine. Auntie Justine.

And whatever this is

 _sun rising beyond the window; life continuing, evil unnecessary unwanted in the universe; Claire Leo Justine breathing in the bed; Abraham dozing with his leg cocked and his head low, standing in the paddock; Michael in his limo bed orchard; and John under the straw_

Whatever this is, Justine supposes they all deserve it.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for possible mental health triggers. Some character death and disturbing content, but all canon and off-screen.


End file.
